On 10 December, International Human Rights Day, Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi from India will be presented with the 2010 Human Rights Award of the city of Weimar.

“Being the Founder of ‘People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR)’, Dr. Raghuvanshi strives for observation and assertion of fundamental rights of disadvantaged fractions of the population, such as women, children, Dalits and indigenous minorities. With his committee he has created structures, substantiating enforcement of fundamental rights.” as stated in the municipal council’s explanatory statement, met on 23 June 2010, determining Dr. Raghuvanshi to be awarded. The awardee has been suggested by “Friedrich-Nauman-Stiftungfür die Freiheit” (Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation for Liberty).

For the past 15 years, Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi has advocated the Dalit’s (members of the lowest cast) rights and concerns in the Indian Federal State Uttar Pradesh. Coherently to this engagement, he founded the ‘People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR)’ in 1996. This Organization supports aggrieved populace, such as children, women or minorities to claim their fundamental rights.

For that purpose he keeps records on any kind of violation of human rights, such as starvation, police torture or child labour and in co-operation with local human rights groups attends their victims. Cases, dealt with by PVCHR, have, due to Lenin Raghuvanshi’s engagement, been seized by the UN - Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

Another of Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi’s successful initiatives is his conceptual design of “people friendly villages”. In areas, first and foremost inhabited by Dalis, primary schools are installed, offering alternative teaching methods and advocating girls’ education. Ambition is the fortification of administrative and organizational abilities of marginalized groups, in order to enable them to call for their rights and arrogate specific concerns from the state.

Frequently addressing politically aggravating, often socio-critical topics, Dr. Raghuvanshi has been subject to harassment and death thread against himself, as well as his colleagues. Moreover he was confronted with an incorrect accusal for alleged subversive statements.

The prize will be awarded on 10th December 2010, 7.30 p.m. at ‘HochschulefürMusik Franz Liszt Weimar’ (Franz Liszt academy of Music). The award is endowed with 2.500,00 € and an artistic supplement by Bauhaus Universität Weimar (Bauhaus University).

Short vita of the awardee

Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi was born on 18th May 1970 in Varanasi. Honours graduate of Medical Science, Ayurveda and Surgery at GurukulKangari University, State University for Ayurveda and Medicine in 1994. Since 1992 married to ShrutiNagvanshi, 1 son, KabeerKarunik, 12 years old.

The awardee is prepared and available for interviews. We appreciate your readiness to cover award ceremony and/or the awardee’s work. Please contact:

Campaign, Latest, Report

2012 Olympics, the perpetrators of the Bhopal disaster will not sponsor the Gamesby NirmalaCarvalho

The plastics multinational Dow Chemicals will not appear on the billboards of the Olympic stadium in London, whose value is circa 7 million pounds (8.3 million euros). Satisfaction of athletes, politicians and NGOs opposed to the sponsor. According to Lenin Raghuvanshi, human rights activist, it is important to create consumer awareness, the true agent of change in the event of unethical policies.

Mumbai (AsiaNews) - The organizers of the Olympic Games have announced that plastics multinational Dow Chemicals linked to the disaster in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) is no longer a sponsor of London 2012. Indian and British human rights groups, politicians and athletes had strongly attacked the initial decision of the Games Committee to accept the funds of the company. Dow, in fact, is the current owner of the chemical plant responsible for the 1984 industrial accident that killed at least 20 thousand people, with still visible consequences for the local population.

The brand of the corporation would have appeared on the billboards around the Olympic stadium, 900m long and 20m high, to the value of 7 million pounds (8.3 million euros). As per contract, Dow still had the possibility to of a further five panels for advertising, but made known it did not wish to accept out of respect for the anti-pollution policies of the Olympics. The company has always rejected the accusations, pointing out that it has acquired the former Union Carbide plant in 2001.

According to Lenin Raghuvanshi, human rights activist and director of Pvchr (People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights), this protest has been positive and symbolic, because the Olympics attract the attention of the entire international community. However, the organizers of the Games should be careful not to go to sponsors that, in some way, may have been involved in genocide.

He also emphasizes that every time you target business from the negative or unethical aspects, it is essential that activists involve consumers, because they are a powerful force to achieve a real change of political and economic mechanisms. For this reason, Raghuvanshi says, First we should start a campaign in the Indian civil society, given that Dow India has a turnover of 500 million dollars.

Regarding the Bhopal tragedy, the activist recalls that for the victims - who are mostly Dalits, tribals and other minorities - there is no systematic form of rehabilitation, or appropriate compensation. This causes still huge frustration.

Caused by a leak of 40 tons of methyl isocyanate (cyanide) from Union Carbide pesticide plant, the Bhopal disaster is considered one of the worst environmental tragedies in history. At least 3,500 people died in the early hours of the incident and a further 20 thousand in the months ahead. The permanently disabled were put at over 150 thousand. Even today, hospitals in the area account for about 6 thousand people a day with respiratory, motor and brain problems associated with the contamination of the territory. However, the Government of Madhya Pradesh, considers the area out of danger.

Anti Violence Initiative, Basic Rights, Latest

It has been 64 years since India — the largest democracy in the world — attained independence. Yet, justice for all is still a far cry in the country where the caste system continues to determine political, social, and economic lives of a billion people.

Money and muscle power, together with political string-pulling, often result in denial of justice for the hapless ‘have-nots’, especially the Dalits (untouchables), ravaged by poverty and illiteracy. Atrocities and extortion on the Dalits, fake encounters, refusal to register complaints against the well-heeled, arbitrary arrests on false charges, illegal detention and custodial deaths are in commonplace.

In the absence of a modern social audit system, the keepers of the law often unleash a ‘police raj’, especially in rural India. A crippled National Human Rights Commission and its state subsidiaries with limited recommendatory control and a dysfunctional Legal Aid System depict a gloomy picture indeed.

In a unique way, Lenin Raghuvanshi, a veteran human rights activist, citing the case-studies primarily drawn from Uttar Pradesh, registering the highest rate of crime against the Dalits, chronicles how with implicit support from the administration, the Dalits are tortured and subjected to humiliation by the higher castes, like being garlanded with shoes, their faces blackened or being forced to ride an ass; yet, in most of the cases, violence, deaths or custodial tortures that are committed against the marginalised and deprived castes go unrecorded.

Ironically, even after having shed the colonial yoke, its legacy continues in the administrative framework of our independent India marked with widespread corruption which has rendered many government-sponsored schemes in rural India a failure.

Lenin Raghuvanshi an Ayurvedic physician by profession, has been working for the rights of bonded and child labourers and other marginalised people in Varanasi and eastern part of Uttar Pradesh, India. In 1996, he and his wife Shruti founded People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Right (PVCHR), a community-based organisation, to break the closed, feudal hierarchies of conservative slums and villages by building up local institutions and supporting them with a high profile and active human rights network.

Already an Ashoka Fellow, Lenin was the President, United Nations’ Youth Organisation (UNYO), Uttar Pradesh (India) Chapter. Lenin’s work has been recognised with Gwangju Human Rights Award for 2007. In 2009, in collaboration with the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victim (RCT), Denmark, Lenin developed Testimonial Models for torture survivors in India. City Council of Weimar in Germany selected Lenin Raghuvanshi for the International Human Rights Award for 2010.

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